With .NET 2005/2008 you can print from a variety of new data sources: arrays, LINQ, and any IEnuberable collection. You can also use SmartTasks to create new reports in minutes. Are you upgrading to Crystal Reports 2008? Create custom add-ins for the menu bar and build a User Function Library!

Many people have requested my books in ebook format. So I’ve done just that! I converted my books to a blog format so that members can have a one-on-one conversation with me about specific sections in the book. This has been very popular as many people ask for help about walking through the various tutorials in the book. Coming in a couple of weeks is a members-only forum where members get priority to have their questions answered. To find out more about the online ebooks, click here: http://members.crystalreportsbook.com/

These are exciting new improvements for all Crystal Reports users and I look forward to adding more new features in the next couple of months.

Hi, I was searching in the internet about how to solve a problem I have and found your name in an asp alliance article, I left a post there but I prefer to email you.The problem is this:Im developing a project with VS 2005 and Crystal Reports, I need to export two reports to Excel but not in just two different xls files but just one with different sheets, if you know how to help me please

I receive a lot of feedback from my ASP Alliance articles, usually comments. I don’t typically answer via e-mail, since that doesn’t help the community. Today I received the following message, and felt it was blog worthy.

I have always been using Datasets and they have given me consistent Results. In fact, I DO NOT USE Report Viewer but export CR Report to a PDF File and then give it to the user as a URL.

BUT, WHEN DATA IS VERY LARGE, THE DATASETS GIVE PROBLEMS such as out of Memory, server not available, Timeouts, hanging etc. I have asked this question to many forums as to how to handle large data sets in ASP.Net with CR.Net. But, nobody has given me any satisfying answer.

I really want to know as to how to solve this problem.

Will You please Help Me.

With Warm Regards,

DN

Here’s the problem–the amount of memory which can be utilized by an ASP.NET web app is 2GB (3GB if you use the /3GB switch). If your dataset exceeds 2GB on a Windows 2003 Server, you will get a Server Not Available error. Less than but close to 2GB will cause a significant decrease in performance or warnings about memory.

The answer is simple–you need a smaller dataset! A 2GB dataset is far too large, especially when you’re feeding it into Crystal Reports. It sounds like you are dumping every bit of raw data into the report, and having the report process and present the data. You really need to have your database queries doing more of the filtering and processing, then return a significantly smaller dataset. In a web environment, it’s best if you only do presentation in your reports–leave the calculations and filtering to the database.

It’s been a long time since I sent out a newsletter because I’ve been busy writing a new book, “Crystal Reports XI Encyclopedia, Volume 1”.

I’m a few chapters from finishing and I’m making the chapters available online as I finish them. The first four chapters have been posted so far. You can download each chapter for free and read it before the book is in the bookstores.

I also want to thank everyone who has linked to my website and helped generate a lot more traffic. So I’m posting new articles as well.

Read tips and tricks for* Formatting numbers as percentages* Efficient use of global constants* Getting rid of the red “X” icons on ASP.NET pages* and much more!

If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ve seen me recommend his Crystal Reports .NET Programming book almost endlessly. If that’s any indication, then his newest book will be an invaluable Crystal Reports XI Reference.

I have crystal reports that are displayed in PDF or Excel format from an ASP.NET application. The reports are displaying, my only problem is in Excel, I keep getting fixed width columns when exporting the report. On my localhost it works (variable width columns, very esy to use), I move my product to the Windows 2003 server, and the export becomes fixed width (same size columns, very difficult to modify).

My first thought was that this was a DLL problem, perhaps an outdated or incorrect one on the server. As it turned out, the problem was with some registry entries not being created when the Crystal Reports was installed:

What happened is in the server, the registry entries for export from crystal reports did not exist. I copied the register entries for Crystal Reports – Export from my machine into the server registry and it fixed my problem (I donâ€™t know if I would recommend that for novices, due to the problems that can occur from changing the registry). In short the server didnâ€™t know what to do with the constant width column statement until I gave it a reference.

I don’t advocate poking around in the registry of a production server, especially if you’re not an experienced regsitry person. Instead, I think an administrator uninstalling and reinstalling the Crystal Reports might have solved the problem. Try that first, before poking around in the registry.

Due to the popularity of my CR.NET Programming book being posted online forfree prior to its publication, I’m doing the same with my new book. You canread chapters from “Crystal Reports XI Encyclopedia” online for free. I’mposting chapters as I finish them and I currently have four chapters posted.I’ll post the next four after I review them for errors. If you find thechapters helpful, please link to them so that others may read them.

Simply import your spreadsheet into Crystal Xcelsius and connect the data to dozens of pre-designed components, including drill down charts, visual sliders, and alert-enabled gauges, all with the ease of â€œpoint-and-clickâ€â€¦no additional programming required.

This is the first in a series of articles showing how to integrate a Crystal Report Manager into DotNetNuke. This article will step through creating a private assembly using Visual Studio as the development environment and using the Data Access Layer in DNN.